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Allthecooks takes you step-by-step through recipes, hands-free, as you cook. Strava enables runners or bike riders to track speed, time and distance while exercising. GolfSight estimates distance to the pin, tracks your score and alerts you to hazards.

All of these apps give you what amounts to real-time "knowledge" about things while doing activities that require both your hands. Whereas before you had to stop what you were doing to use a phone or other device, the Glass versions enable you to keep doing what you're doing and still get the information.

Even though these apps don't even begin to take advantage of everything Glass could do, they do provide hints about what life will be like for Glass wearers two or three years from now. You'll be able to walk around and be very well informed and in total control of your surroundings and online life without appearing to actually use a mobile device. Information about the world around you and the task at hand will simply appear in your field of vision.

Information will feel like knowledge. Communication will feel like telepathy. And your voice- and gesture-control over everything around you will feel like magic.

The Other Reason Google Glass will Go Mainstream

The other factor to consider is that tomorrow's Glass won't look like today's.

Prescription glass support for Google Glass is expected in January. Google has a patent for this, which involves a separable Google Glass module that connects to specially designed prescription glasses and sunglasses with a magnet.

That means one Glass device could be worn with multiple pairs of glasses.

It also means that people who are already wearing glasses on their face will be simply adding Glass to the "hardware" already present.

Besides, Moore's Law will make everything in Glass smaller and cheaper. Google will no doubt streamline the appearance of Glass to make it both smaller and less obtrusive. And the price will probably fall to below $300 at some point in the future (today they cost $1,500, which is too much).

When you think about all these factors together -- the possibilities with app, the evolution of the hardware and the lowering of the price -- it's pretty likely that Google Glass will become a mainstream consumer product.

So let’s never say never about Google Glass. We don’t know what it will be able to do. We don’t know how it will look. And we don’t know how much it will cost.

If this week’s announcements are any indication, Glass will be amazing to use. And it will also look cool and cost little.